The Background described in this section is included merely to present a general context of the disclosure. The Background description is not prior art to the claims in this application, and is not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
Sound source localization techniques improve the quality of communications and reduce noise by directing microphones toward a desired sound source and/or away from an undesired sound or noise source. In order to localize multiple sound sources, such as with a conferencing system for multiple participants, microphone arrays with many microphones are used to localize multiple sound sources. However, as mobile computing and communication devices, such as mobile phones, tablet devices, notebook computers, and other network-connected devices are miniaturized, it is both space and cost prohibitive to include a microphone array for the localization of multiple sound sources in the smaller-sized devices.
Sound source localization techniques are described to improve the quality of communications and reduce noise by directing microphones toward a desired sound source and/or away from an undesired sound or noise source. The number of sound sources that can be concurrently localized and/or tracked depends on the number of microphones that are used. For example, a single sound source can be tracked concurrently with two microphones and two sound sources can be tracked concurrently with three microphones. For each additional microphone added, an additional sound source can be concurrently localized.
Concurrently localizing multiple sound sources is useful in various applications. For example, localizing sound sources can be used for reducing background noise when using a communications device, eliminating beamforming time delays during transitions between active speakers in a conference call, and canceling out the effects of echoes and/or reverberation in the environment around a communication device.
Conventional techniques for sound source localization employ microphone arrays with a number of microphones in each array to increase the number of sound sources that can be localized simultaneously. However, as mobile computing and communication devices, such as mobile phones, tablet devices, notebook computers, and other network-connected devices are miniaturized, it is both space and cost prohibitive to include a microphone array for the localization of multiple sound sources in the smaller-sized devices. Typically, a mobile phone may include three or fewer microphones, where one microphone is used to receive desired sound and the other microphones are used for noise cancellation.